And you thought your apartment was a roach motel. In China, a growing number of farmers are making their living by breeding a rather unusual variety of livestock: thousands and thousands of cockroaches. The roach farming industry remains secretive in China, with proprietors wary of attracting government attention or the ire of their neighbors. But the industry is also an increasingly prosperous one, as the Los Angeles Times points out: the price of dried cockroaches has soared from $2 per pound in 2010 to $20 today. That’s mostly because roaches are more popular than ever among Chinese medical providers, who incorporate crushed roaches into experimental baldness and cancer treatments, as well as cosmetics firms. They’re also being marketed as mouthwatering delicacies by some restaurants. Bon appétit!

The Bronx Zoo will allow you to name a Madagascar hissing roach after that someone special for a mere $10. What a deal!

Can’t decide on what to get that special someone for Valentine’s Day? Sometimes the answer is all around us, and right where it’s been for millions of years—like cockroaches! How better to express your appreciation for that special someone than to name a Madagascar hissing cockroach after them?

Cockroaches may be nasty bugs, but they could help fight even nastier ones. New research finds that the rudimentary brains of cockroaches and locusts teem with antimicrobial compounds that slay harmful E. coli and MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant staph bacterium. The work could lead to new compounds for fighting infectious diseases in humans. Extracts of ground-up brain and other nerve tissue from the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, and desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, killed more than 90 percent of a type of E. coli that causes meningitis, and also killed methicillin-resistant staph, microbiologist Simon Lee reported September 7 at the Society for General Microbiology meeting at the University of Nottingham in England.Read more HERE.